Games that are more fun than their extremely punishing design.

[LegitHyperbole]

SvennoJ said:

The first Burnout game. That was game ending for just brushing against another car, instant 'crash'. Still more fun than the later versions where you can just knock every car of the road.

Arcade racers all used to be very punishing, now it's full throttle ram through everything :/

Colin McRae rally was also very hard, so rewarding to finally nail the course after dozens of attempts. Of course back then you only had a handful of tracks, so the games made you work to unlock the next track.

Omg. EXACTLY. Dirt Rally is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. You take the time to learn to be in tune with the Co driver, manage the throttle and brakes, slowly increasing your speed as you get the feel of it and then magic happens and no matter how good you get you always have to be on point, just a hair away from totalling the car and wrecking your ranking. It's so finely tuned, fair and the fun always edges out the insane difficulty of keeping up in the top spot. Pity about Dirt Rally 2, they went too far with the physics engine and extra nonsesnee and made the roads too wide but Dirt 4 with the difficulty turned up and the settings youbget later in the game makes up for it plus the arcadey campaign of Dirt 4 beats out Dirt Rallys by a country mile. 

Man, thank you. I'm gonna do some Rallying in Dirt Rally.